St Andrew's Church, Weeley

“Photography can be a way into worlds and memories that words sometimes fail to convey.”
Stacy Martin
Something of a nostalgic trip down memory lane today, back to a village I visited fifty years ago for a weekend pop festival, hot on the heels of Woodstock (almost). It had taken me several days hitchhiking with a friend across country, sleeping in old quarries, in fields at the side of the road and the last night at the festival site in a straw hut in a field of stubble. The festival site was opened on Friday when we all poured in and staked our place until Monday morning, nearly three days of solid music. Welcome to my teenage years.
Today it was about an hour’s drive to Weeley, through villages whose names stuck with me through the years since – like Standon and Ware. I was going as a sort of pilgrimage to the old site, not expecting to find anything unexpected there. My only recollections were of fields of stubble and a sea of young people - I’d managed to find a photo of the site from the tower of the church on the edge of the village, so the idea was to head to the church and get my bearings from there – it was just open fields after all.
Used Google maps once I was in the village and drove through, past a convenience store and bakery – not much had changed seemingly. The church was on the outskirts of the village so I headed there and parked up, making my way up the lane to the church.
The fields of stubble were plentiful, much like they would have been in the summer of 1971. The event was organised by Clacton Round Table as a small charity fundraising event for around 5,000 people; estimates of attendance varied between 110,000 and 150,000! The performers included the likes of Status Quo, Rod Stewart, T.Rex, Lindisfarne and Rory Gallagher to name but a few of those who later became big names in music. I remember the atmospheric Riders on the Storm (Doors) being played over the P.A. while I dipped into my meal of cold baked beans (from the tin) with hunks of white bread ripped from a loaf.
My spell of quiet reflection at the church over, I made my way back to the 21st century and an evening meal with D&S, so far removed from my gourmet meal in the field fifty years ago.